Symbolic Links, what's the big deal?

[chanchan]

Excuse my ignorance, but I don't see why a symbolic link system is so great.

I just install my applications on another hard drive and it works. why do all this messing around with creating links on C:\ and stuff?

It's not like having a symbolic link on your main SSD will make things faster O___O

I also found quite a few games, don't really need any special registry treatment, they just work from wherever you move the directory to, ie: Steam and ETQW.

 

[Killroy]

I don't really use symbolic links, but some reasons off the top of my head:

1. You don't lose the folder hierarchy and organization of installed programs. You don't have to think "Where did I install this program?", you just go to Program Files and follow the symbolic link to the correct place. This also makes it easier for other programs/patches that you install if they just default to look in Program Files for a particular folder.

2. They can be really handy for organizing media and documents. If your library is larger than your largest hard drive or array, then you have to break the library up (Windows 7's libraries do reduce the need for this). Who wants to have to think "Which hard drive did I put that movie/song/picture/document on?"

3. You can install games/programs you currently use to your fastest hard drive and once that hard drive reaches its capacity, you move the least used programs to the slower drive and replace them with symbolic links. This also helps you with point number one in maintaining hierarchy and organization.

I am sure there are other good reasons that someone else will give, but these are just the few that came to mind.

 

[dustNbone]

Symbolic links also allow you to change your mind. You can take that big game off your SSD and put it on a hard drive without having to reinstall it. True that some games don't need registry entries, but the vast majority do. It's a tool, for flexibility more than anything. It's actually about time NTFS did this, it's old hat in UNIX. Very useful.

Dustin

 

[GushpinBob]

Oooor if you have vast amounts of memory you can create a RAM drive, copy, and link a game there.